Category Archives: Uncategorized

November, but might not be good news. Minnesota also lost 13,700 jobs in November and more than 22,900 jobs in the last three months. How do we lose jobs and have lower unemployment? Continue reading →

Just last week, Metro State congratulated itself for its work on developing curricula for teaching both Dakota and Ojibwe languages. The timing was ironic, as this week students and faculty angrily protested a decision not to offer two courses — “American Indian Spirituality” and “Dakota People of Minnesota: Genocide, Survival, and Recovery” — in 2012, the 150th anniversary of the War of 1862. Continue reading →

On TV, they’re called infomercials, but in newspapers they look like news stories, with only fine print identifying them as ads. And they’re phony as a three-dollar bill or, in this case, phony as an “absolutely free” $2 bill, an “Amish” Heat Surge space heater, and an “armored safe.” Continue reading →

UPDATED 12/1/2011  November 30 was the deadline for reopening University Avenue, so I took my camera along for a ride from Emerald Street in Minneapolis to Hamline in St. Paul. Is it open? That depends on what “open” means. Continue reading →

Romenesko was the news-of-the-week for the journo in-crowd last week, and I probably missed my chance to grab my 15 seconds of re-Tweeted fame by waiting until now to write about it. Strangely, though, the reason I am late has a lot to do with what Romenesko did wrong. Continue reading →

After five years years, the Minnesota Independent will end its run on Friday. The Minnesota Independent was the first on-line news organization to win a Page One award from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists in 2007, and its coverage has continued to win awards since then. Like its parent organization, the American Independent News Network, MnIndy has offered a distinctly progressive journalistic voice. Continue reading →

In March, Jimmy John fired six workers involved in a unionization campaign for putting up posters (see below) that charged Jimmy Johns workers were pressured to work while sick. “Jimmy John’s workers don’t get paid sick days. Shoot, we can’t even call in sick,” said the poster, which urged people to “Help Jimmy John’s workers win sick days” by calling the owner. On November 9, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint charging that Jimmy John’s “unlawfully disciplined, threatened, and ultimately terminated” the workers because of their union advocacy. Next step: a hearing before an administrative law judge in January. Continue reading →

About 40 people gathered at the Wells Fargo bank in West St. Paul November 5 in solidarity with the Occupy movement, which designated November 5 as Take Your Money Out Day. “We are indigenous, people of color, low-income, the ones most impacted by this greed,” said a press release from the Occupy Robert Street group led by Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc. In contrast to the main Occupy events across the country, this group was mostly Latino and Native American. Continue reading →

Want to know where the rich people live? How much more it costs to rent in Highland Park than in Frogtown? Whether Minneapolis or St. Paul has a higher percentage of jobs in the finance and insurance sector? All that and more is in the neighborhood profiles put together by the Wilder Foundation using census data from the past two decades. Continue reading →